


Into the Depths

by janetcarter



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Gen, Mercy Killing, Sensory Deprivation, Telepathy, Treat, death of a minor character, forced deep scan, references to Susan/Talia, references to Talia/Jason Ironheart, surreal telepathy stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-27 22:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20767748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janetcarter/pseuds/janetcarter
Summary: Control interrogates a familiar blip. Talia makes a choice.





	Into the Depths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kanadka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanadka/gifts).

> “For your hands are stained with blood,  
your fingers with guilt.  
Your lips have spoken falsely,  
and your tongue mutters wicked words.”  
\- Isaiah 53:9

Sometimes Talia didn’t realize what she had lost until Control tempted her memory. It was as simple as the stinging sliver of a papercut or the burn of bitter coffee against taste buds. As unpleasant as the sensations were, they were welcome as opposed to her usual isolation from the outside world. She darted to every beam of sensory input Control filtered through, like an emaciated mouse to rotten cheese, the trap in full sight. 

Over the years, Control achieved a position performing interrogations on Telepath Resistance prisoners. She was quick to remind Talia it had been her own disloyalty that gave her such intimate experience with rebels and blips. Control had absorbed every shred of intel Talia blindly handed her as she slunk in the shadows undetected. It gave her quite the resume. 

If only the Corps knew what she was hiding; that she hadn’t managed to exterminate the pest inside her own head, and that she hadn’t unlocked the powers she wasn’t supposed to have. 

It was the one thing she and Talia had in common: if the Corps found out about Jason’s gift, they’d both be dissected. Control had endured too many years of imprisonment to let them crush her freedom beneath their heels. And Talia, although she had withered away, was the only one who could protect her abilities from cruel, devouring hands. 

A heavy door clanged shut, waking Talia from her sunless sleep. The badge’s unfamiliar metallic backing pinched her chest. She wished her nails would dig into the irritation, but Control had grown accustomed. Or perhaps she was simply ignoring it.

As confident footsteps echoed into the cell, Talia noticed an emaciated man huddled in the corner. He shook his head in a kind of slow motion that made it seem like he was underwater. Despite the panic spiking off him, the sleeper injections quilted him in their vigorous lethargy.

“You’ll never win,” the man slurred, making no effort to face his interrogator.

Control’s lips contorted into a smirk. “I already have.” 

That smug raspiness might have once been recognizable as Talia’s own voice, but not a trace of humanity laced its breath. Even though her own lips and tongue and teeth gave the words form, they felt like rocks in her mouth.

The man lifted his head like the weight of the world rested on his neck. His small stature would have been enough to recognize him, but the bushy eyebrows and snub-nose, long face and gaunt cheeks… Talia heard the lurker’s voice before his lips even parted. 

His mouth fell open. “It’s… It’s you.” 

_ Leave him alone!  _ Talia plead. 

It only strengthened Control’s resolve.  _ The only reason they caught him was because of your involvement. This is your punishment, Talia, for a fool’s heroism.  _

“You don’t have to do this,” he told her, like he still believed--or needed to believe--that he had once gotten through. “You… You helped us once.”

Control shook her head. “And where did that  _ help _ bring you in the end?” 

Horror crept across his face. 

“How could you? After... After what they did to Jason?”

Something flashed across his hollow eyes. Despite how quickly he tried to hide it, if Talia saw it… so did Control. 

“I know you know,” she told him. “About his…  _ gift. _ ” 

He said nothing. 

Control narrowed her eyes. 

_ No!  _

Control snaked into his mind and sank her fangs into grey matter. It was evident that he’d been scanned multiple times before this, but he’d managed to mostly keep the Corps out; until now. Control’s assault shook and crumbled cracked pillars, reducing his blocks to dust.

She forced Talia to watch. She forced her to experience the same fear splitting him in two, tightened muscles and stifled screams. She forced her to feel the same sickening pleasure pulsing through her veins as she left rubble in her wake. 

Control darted past files and files of information the Corps would have loved to get its hands on until centering on the memory of Downbelow.

A long forgotten version of Talia stood in his line of sight, lost without her gloves and fractured without her badge. This Talia had nowhere to go. This Talia knew the only person in the whole universe who could piece her back together was Susan Ivanova.

Even still, this lurker saw Talia as a beacon of hope in the drab, foggy atmosphere of Downbelow. And now he thought it had all been a lie. There was no doubt Susan did, too. 

_ Destroy it,  _ Control instructed.

A small tunnel opened up before Talia, like a heavy boulder rumbling as its pushed from a cave entrance. For once, Talia hesitated at the light spilling in. It took every ounce of willpower not to bask in its warmth, but considering where it lead? Could she really? And if she did… how much control would she really have? 

She slowly stepped toward it. She could hardly see anything in the darkness, but it looked like the inside of a pipe. 

_ You know what’ll happen if they find this. Do it, _ Control hissed in that voice that was once her own.  _ Now. _

After a moment, her consciousness streamed down into its inky interior. It ended in water. She instinctively held her breath before realizing its futility.

Memories reflected in the glassy surfaces of bubbles all around her. She couldn’t look at them too long: flashes of the resistance, flickers of a pristine Corps upbringing, and glimpses of experimentation alongside Jason. As she delved deeper, avoiding each bubble in her path like it was a swarm of jellyfish all around her, her own distorted face caught her eye.

It floated above her palms. She hardly recognized the Talia staring back, innocently brushing ungloved fingertips against her badge.

_ I-I can’t... _

_ You have to! _

She expanded the bubble into a net beneath her. She sank into his violent pain, sank into Control’s twisted pleasure. She dug into him with agency she hadn’t experienced in years, destroying axonal bridges and dendritic roots. She dug deeper, deeper, deeper, tearing the web apart from the inside out despite everything in her screaming to stop. 

Control’s focus remained on the memory, ensuring sure Talia disintegrated the net of neurons holding it in place. The rest of her attention went to keeping Talia tethered to her own mental cell like a puppet on a string. 

Talia suspected she was also trying to prod at her powers, trying to find a way to absorb them and leave Talia behind. But she couldn’t touch them. She could only contain Talia’s path to protect herself.

Down below, in the darkest depths of the sea, his body floated lifeless. 

She couldn’t help herself. All she wanted was contact, human contact, with someone besides her captor. Even under such circumstances… a prisoner like him must crave it too. Besides, she needed to have just one person in this world who knew the truth. 

She split herself in two, remaining with the memory in Control’s attention, but sinking into the shadowy depths in translucent form. An invisible thread still bound her to the chain, but granted enough length to let her continue. 

The webbing passed through her like a ghost as she descended, covering her in chills as the fragmented sight of her joining hands with the other telepaths throbbed in her head.

When she finally reached him and regained her color, his eyes snapped open. 

_ It’s okay! _ She placed her hands on his shoulders to calm his writhing.  _ It’s me. It’s really me. _

_ How could you? _

_ I didn’t... The Corps put her in my head. _

He stopped squirming but remained tense beneath her grasp. He grimaced beneath the pain of her tampering with his memory elsewhere.  _ Can’t you… Can’t you stop this? _

She shook her head sluggishly beneath the waves.  _ I’m sorry. _

_ I can’t keep going without the hope you gave us. _

She felt like an anchor had wrapped itself around her heart. It took everything in her to not sink along with it. 

_ Please. Don’t let them get the rest of my memories. _

The memory’s destruction was in its final stages. It was only a matter of time before Control realized what Talia was doing. 

_ I’m sorry,  _ she whispered, holding his temples in her hands. She pressed her forehead against his. _ I’m so, so sorry. _

With the last threads of the memory broken and frayed, he slumped against the wall of his cell. 

Talia unclenched her fist from around his heart.

His stream of thoughts evaporated.

If only they’d taken her, too. 

The ocean flushed from beneath her as Control yanked the chain, landing Talia back in her cell. Water drenched her hair and clothes. Control stalked from just outside her cage. 

“ _ What did you do!? _ ” she snarled, fists around the bars as if they were Talia’s throat. 

“I saved him,” Talia croaked. Maybe if she said it, she could believe it. If someone came along who could save her from her own hell she would have begged for the same.

“You ruined us.”

Control knelt beside him to confirm what she already knew. He was gone. 

Talia’s hands were once stained by Control’s cruelty alone. Now, water dripped from them like blood; thick and lifeless, eternal and damned. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ty to Wildandwhirling for being a lovely beta <3


End file.
